Well, here we go with the final installment of out Tim Tam Slam reviews, with the last one in the range. (You can read the others here and here, including a description of how to perform a Tim Tam Slam).

It’s probably worth noting at this point that this whole range as just half a star health rating. This whole health rating system is of course a complete nonsense, but it’s nice to see that something unashamedly bad for you rated so low. This way you know it’s going to be good.

And these ones are good. They are the best of the bunch. Rich and malty, with a smooth caramel. It’s a bit like Milo in a bar – but better. Again, I’m not sure the Slamming aspect is particularly enhanced, but good on Arnott’s for celebrating this more Australian of rituals in this new range.

I’m going to give these ones an eight out of ten. Arnott’s seem to be on a roll at the moment. Keep up the good work, guys…

So today, we move on to the next in the Tim Tam Slam range – Dark Choc and Sticky Raspberry Flavour. They are certainly going to town with the long names for this range – it causes all kinds of problems with the page title going onto two lines. I must remind Arnott’s to avoid this in future.

If you don’t know what a Tim Tam Slam is, then you should read my post about the Choc Hazelnut and Gooey Caramel Flavour. I’m not going to repeat it here. Hopefully since them you have been practicing, and can undertake The Slam with aplomb.

I was immediately hopeful about this flavour. Dark Chocolate is always a cut above milk, in my humble opinion. But then I was also somewhat suspicious about the ‘Choc’. ‘Choc’ can mean some sort of fake chocolate, rather than the normal high quality chocolate that Arnott’s for the most part use (with the execrable Tim Tam White being the dishonourable exception). Thankfully here real chocolate is in evidence; I presume that with the already inflated character count in the name there really wasn’t room on the pack for ‘Chocolate’.

Once again, I didn’t feel these slammed any differently or better than regular Tim Tams, but they were actually quite nice. Bit of a tang to the raspberry, nice rich chocolate. I also quite liked the dual-textured filling – the raspberry creme contrasted with the softer jam.

These are pretty good. I’m going to give them a seven out of ten. Just one more flavour to go – will it continue to improve, I wonder?

There are new Tim Tams from Arnotts! How exciting. They are a new rage specifically designed for ‘slamming’.

What is the Tim Tam Slam, I hear you ask? Well, let me explain the correct way to do it. (And this is the correct way, by the way. If you read, see or hear differently then you should take it upon yourself to correct any misapprehensions).

First, you bite off the two ends of the biscuit, taking off as little biscuit as possible to expose the biscuit and filling at each end. (Not the corners, not just the chocolate. You need to take off 1-2mm of biscuit from each of the shorter sides).

Next, take a hot cup or tea or coffee (it doesn’t matter which; this is according to taste, although hot chocolate or Milo are frowned upon). Dip one end of the Tim Tam a few millimetres into the hot beverage, and place the other end between the lips, leaving the beverage on the table (so you are bending down over the cup). Quickly suck up the hot liquid, using the Tim Tam as the straw.

As soon as you feel the hot liquid reach the top of the biscuit (and you need to move fast here), grip the biscuit between your lips and / or teeth, and raise your head. Continue putting your head back, until the biscuit is pointing at the ceiling. You should not be holding it with your fingers at this point.

Now, using your tongue, allow the biscuit to slowly slide into your mouth. The effect for the viewer should be that it slowly disappears from view, sinking into your head like a sinking thing.

Close your mouth, put your head to a normal position and finish chewing the biscuit, enjoying the hot, softened confection. It is best to transfix your audience with a wild stare at this point, before breaking into a satisfied smile as you finish your Tim Tam. (The absolute master of this art, and the person I learned from, is my mate Ian. He elevates Tim Tam Slamming into an art form. Next time I’m up in QLD I’ll get him to demonstrate in a video).

Anyway, it seems that Arnott’s are celebrating this ritual by creating a range if Tim Tams optimised for slamming. There are three in the range, and the first one we will be looking at is the Choc Hazelnut and Gooey Caramel Flavour (which also wins a prize for the longest name for a biscuit ever).

Arnott’s seem to have attempted to engineer these biscuits with a softer strip of filing up the middle that works as a ‘straw’, with regular creme filling either side. Whilst they slammed quite satisfactorily, to be honest they were no more effective at this than a regular Tim Tam.

The flavour, though, is not quite there. It’s a bit sweet; the hazelnut is fighting with the caramel and it somehow doesn’t quite work all together. It’s not a bad Tim Tam, but not a classic. I’m going to give it a five out of ten. Perhaps the others in the range will be better?

Sorry it’s taken me so long to get to these. I’m not quite sure why it took so long; I think I bought some to review, and then left them at work. They then got eaten before I could try them, and I forgot to get any more. Anyway, here they are – the ‘Messina’ flavour Salted Caramel and Vanilla.

This is not the first Salted Caramel Tim Tam. And certainly not the first salted caramel biscuit from Arnott’s. So how does this incarnation stack up?

Well, the biscuit part of them is a rather strange orange colour, with a darker orange creme inside. They smell sort of cloying – so not a great start.

Unfortunately, they don’t taste great either. Very sweet, with hardly any salt, and with a distinctive cardboard taste. You know that taste you get from old ice-cream – the kind that comes in a cardboard box – when it’s been in the freezer a bit too long, and you get the bit from the last edge? Well, they taste kind of like that. Which I suppose captures the ice-cream vibe in one way, but I can’t help feeling Arnott’s were going for something a bit more classy than that.

This whole Messina thing to me has not been a huge success. I might humbly suggest it’s time for a re-think, Arnott’s? I’m going to give these three out of ten.

Arnott’s are at it again, fiddling with old ideas. Apparently they have re-branded the ‘Chocolicious‘ range simply as ‘bites’, and also changed the flavours. In shocking news, it seems the dark chocolate version is no more. This is a tragedy, as it was by far the best one. However, in more cheery news, the Mint Slice is now honoured with the chocolicous bite treatment.

To be honest, I was never a fan of the whole ‘chocolicious’ thing, a rather unfortunate portmanteau that I previously blasted as ‘try hard and derivative’. ‘Bites’ is more to the point, although I now feel rather nostalgic for the old packaging, which I think did look more classy than the new, rather utilitarian design.

Enough of all that – how are the new Mint Slice versions? Well, the Mint Slice, as you will know, I believe to be Arnott’s finest creation. So I was pretty excited about these. The individual elements – the chocolate, the biscuit and the peppermint cream – are all there. But the proportions are way different. The chart below will give you the idea:

That’s a lot of chocolate. Chocolate dominates in this new format. That’s not all bad, as it’s Arnott’s delicious high quality dark chocolate, but it does rather unbalance the texture a bit; there’s not really enough biscuit to give textural contrast and structure. These are good, but not as good as the original. I’m going to give them an eight out of ten.

Wow! A whole new set of Tim Tam flavours have been launched. And with funky packaging too!

This new range has been ‘inspired by Gelato Messina’. For those of you who have not heard of Gelato Messina, it’s a posh ice-cream shop, and currently flavour-du-jour of the hipster classes. Move over Zumbo; this is the new cool in desserts. Arnott’s have clearly read the zeitgeist, ditched the patissier extraordinaire, and hope to ride the gelato craze.

There are four new flavours: Mint Choc, Coconut and Lychee, Black Forest and Salted Caramel Vanilla. Now, you may be excused for thinking that sounds all a little familiar. Arnott’s have previously ranged Mint, Coconut, Black Forest and Salted Caramel versions of Tim Tams. Indeed, some of those flavours were apparently created by the great Adriano Zumbo himself, so it must be a bit galling to not only be dumped in favour of an ice-cream parlour, but for them to steal your flavours too.

It was the Mint Choc I tore into first. To be honest, I was super-excited. The previous Mint incarnation of Tim Tam was, in my opinion, one of the finest Tim Tams ever made, and I was hoping that this would be the same biscuit, dressed up to capture those oh-so-fickle millennials.

Well, sad to say, it is not. it is similar, to be sure, but not the same. Instead of the rich mint cocoa filling of the original, this one has a slightly green-tinged cream that smells rather like the junior Chillikebabs’ toothpaste. It certainly has a minty taste, but a more creamy, almost vanillary version. To Arnott’s credit, it does actually taste quite a bit like Mint Choc ice cream. And it’s by no means a bad biscuit; they are quite yummy and easy to chomp on. It’s just not quite up to the high benchmark set by the original (which I went all out and gave 10/10 for). I’m going to give these a highly creditable 8/10. And Arnott’s – please bring back the original mint ones…

I recently had the dubious pleasure of attending a ‘management off-site’. Not in Fiji, or even the Blue Mountains, but in Manly. Oh so glamorous.

After our executive lunch in a beachfront cafe (where they forgot to bring half the things we ordered), we had ice-cream from a concession in the ferry terminal. Oh yes, I lead the glamorous life of a business executive. The last of us to make their selection was our Operations man, an affable German still fairly new to Australia. After examining the flavours on offer, he plumped for a scoop of chocolate and a scoop of mango.

How we scoffed. ‘Amateur!’, we told him, having chosen two flavours that clearly had no chance of making a harmonious dual-scoop marriage. And, indeed, with some chagrin, he had to admit that it didn’t really work as a blend. ‘But vee do not have all ziss selection of ice-cream in der Deutschland,’ he plaintively cried. We nodded knowingly. No Australian would ever make such a flavour faux-pas.

Surely?

Well, as it happens, not a week after that inglorious management exercise in Manly, Arnott’s have done exactly that, and released a mango Tim Tam. (They seem to be in a bit of a tropical theme at the moment, having also recently done Pina Colada and Pineapple. The rumour is that this is due to the Tim Tam team being relocated to Queensland.)

I bought some, and took them to work for people to sample, and the results were not spectacular. The mango cream is sort of OK, in an over-sweet mango flavour kind of way. But it just fights with the chocolate on the palate, and the whole thing is a sickly mess.

Sorry Arnott’s, a mango chocolate biscuit just isn’t going to work. Even a German could tell you that.

Another day, another Tim Tam flavour. I feel a little sad about all this, actually. A new Tim Tam flavour used to be a major event. Something pretty seismic. Certainly worthy of significant excitement.

But now, well, some of that is gone. Flavours come and go, and unless you are quick you might not even realise it before it disappears again, only to be replaced by yet another. What used to be something sweated over; the evolution of a cultural icon, now seems to be a mere pawn in the commercial objectives to keep major supermarkets onside. Exhibit a) – these are only available in Woolies.

Sorry, didn’t mean to get maudlin there. Let’s get into this.

For me, toffee apples are associated with Halloween. Generally they consist of cheap hard caramel over an even cheaper apple, jammed on a stick. I haven’t had one for years, but I think the generally accepted way to eat them is to chew off the toffee bit whilst aiming for minimal apple consumption, and then throw the apple away.

So how does this new Tim Tam measure up? Well, the inside is a rather startling red colour, I suppose to evoke the look of a red apple. They do have an applely (appley? Applee?) aroma. To taste they sort of do taste like cheap apple with cheap caramel, so I suppose they do evoke those childhood Halloween memories.

I’m doing them a bit of a disservice. They are actually not too bad. A bit over sweet, perhaps, and without a great deal of depth, Definitely not a classic. But far from offensive. I’m going to give them a five out of ten.

The Mint Slice is an Australian icon. Yes, perhaps slightly overshadowed by it’s better known Tim Tam brother, but to my mind actually a superior biscuit.

Arnott’s have taken this classic, and ‘twisted’ it, with an oh-so-trendy salted version, replacing the peppermint cream with what appears to be Tim Tam filling, enhanced with the addition of salt.

Salt seems to be the magic ingredient being added to all manner of confectionery and cakes at the moment. I suppose that making things even more unhealthy usually enhances the appeal. These biscuits rate a whole ‘0.5 out of 5’ stars on the Health Star Rating, so you know there’re going to be good.

And they are good. Smooth chocolaty cream, with just a hint of the salt at the end, on that rich biscuit base enrobed with thick dark chocolate. Oh yes, these are at least as addictive as the original. Eating a whole pack of these is waaaay to easy.

The Arnott’s flavour innovation machine just keeps cranking ’em out. It seems not a week goes by without yet another Tim Tam variety hitting the shelves.

I imagine the overlords in the marketing department standing over the poor cream filings development team, whipping them mercilessly and crying ‘more new flavours, and make them tasty!’, whilst the poor, downtrodden fillings team frantically concoct new flavours whilst dodging the flailing lashes. And having previously created the Pina Colada flavour, it seems they grabbed the pineapple part of this recipe, left out the coconut and then held it up in trembling hands to their masters, whimpering, ‘try this new Pineapple flavour, oh great ones’, in the hope it would appease them and earn a brief respite from the relentless pain.

Oh yes, it’s no fun being an Arnott’s cream filling developer.

So I eat these in solidarity with those poor folks, but at the same time feel a bit cheated that it’s essentially the same as the Pina Colada without the coconut. Whilst I think is actually less good, as the coconut adds richness. And to be honest I’m still not sold on this whole pineapple / chocolate combo thing.

Sorry, this one only gets a two and a half out of ten. But please, Arnott’s, don’t take it out on your poor filings team.